One of the more brutal weapons to see use on both sides of the war in Iraq is the KPV, a belt-fed heavy machine gun designed to take down aircraftâ€ŠÂ—â€Šusing a round dating back to tank-busting guns in World War II. The 14.5x114-millimeter KPV is not as pervasive as the smaller DShK, a rough equivalent to the U.S. M2 Browning. But the 108-pound KPV is nonetheless a big, unwieldy and extremely dangerous threat the Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga have encountered on their push toward Mosul. The Islamic State seized dozens of them in Syria and Iraq, bolting the guns...

ItÂ’s no secret that the Soviet army was badly prepared to fight Finnish forces in late 1939 and early 1940, during the brief, bloody andâ€ŠÂ—â€Šfor the Sovietsâ€ŠÂ—â€Šcatastrophic Russo-Finnish Winter War. One particularly ill-conceived weapon underscores just how unready the Soviets were. The armored sled. In essence, a pair of overburdened skis supporting an entirely-too-heavy metal shield that Soviet commanders hoped would help protect hapless infantry in the absence of tank and artillery support. The sled failed. Worse, it actually got a lot of young Soviet troopers needlessly killed.

Yuri Bezmenov gave a series of testimonies of the plan for America's destruction. Not so different from how it was done in other countries, take over and kill the liberals who helped them take over. If you're a liberal and you want that "change" you'll get it. And it will cost you your life.

A day after the German blitzkrieg into the Soviet Union in June 1941, more than 200 Nazi tanks were powering through Lithuania on a race northward to Leningrad. The Luftwaffe knocked out the SovietsÂ’ nearby air bases, leaving counter-attacking armored columns easy prey for German bombers. Desperate to staunch the bleeding, on June 23 the Red Army sprang its KV-1 and KV-2 tanksâ€ŠÂ—â€Šwhich at the time packed some of the heaviest tank armor in the worldâ€ŠÂ—â€Šon the advancing Germans near Raseiniai.

In a war that never happened, formations of heavy and rather odd-looking Soviet tanks would have powered through atomic explosions in breakthrough attacks into West Germany. Enter the Object 279 tank, a curious oddity from the late 1950s which was obsoleteâ€ŠÂ—â€Šdespite its design principles deliberately reflecting the fear of a nuclear battlefieldâ€ŠÂ—â€Šby the time it was produced. It was certainly not a success, as the Soviet Union only manufactured a handful of prototypes.

As Hitler's troops withdrew from Poland in 1945, Stalin's Red Army advanced towards Berlin. Instead of liberation, the Soviet troops raped and pillaged as they followed the retreating Nazis. In January 1945, as the war continued, French authorities sent Dr Madeleine Pauliac to Moscow to assist with the efforts to repatriate any French prisoners of war discovered by the Soviets.

Military aircraft can have notoriously short lifespans, especially during periods of technological ferment. The most elite aircraft of World War I could become obsolete in a matter of months. Things weren’t much different in World War II. And at the dawn of the jet age, entire fleets of aircraft became passé as technologies matured. The advanced fighters that fought in the skies over Korea became junk just a few years later. But a few designs stand the test of the time. The B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, yet remains in service today. New C-130s continue to roll off the...

Russian warplanes bombed an elite force of US-trained Syrian rebels on Thursday in an attack apparently aimed at weakening the group’s ability to fight Isil. The New Syrian Army (NSA), which receives training and direction from British, American and Jordanian special forces, said their base had been struck with cluster bombs. The strike left two people dead and another 18 injured, appearing to incapacitate at least half of the force and drawing a furious reaction from Washington. "Russia's latest actions raise serious concern about Russian intentions," a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We will seek an...

How about something a little lighter!? Soviet humor, where we can all certainly use a laugh at the inhuman system of enslavement we helped defeat. Find and post your own! Happy Tuesday .... ------------------------------- This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: “What will be the results of the next elections?” We’re answering: “Nobody can tell.” Somebody has stolen yesterday the exact results of the next elections from the office of the Central Committee of the USSR.” ------------------------------- This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: “Will the police still exist when communism is built?” We’re answering: “Of course, not....

Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov lived in the USSR and he is not feeling the bern. I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes...

Since 1928, the battlefields of the world have seen an oddball Soviet-era weapon that proves the truth of the old saying, â€śLooks arenâ€™t everything.â€ť Its nickname was once â€śStalinâ€™s phonographâ€ť â€” and the staccato tune it plays is the sound of automatic fire. Used by the Russians to gun down both the Finns and the Nazis, hefted by Chinese communist and North Korean troops fighting United Nations forces, and carried by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese when attacking American soldiers, the Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova Pekhotny â€” better known as the DP light machine gun â€” has spilled a...

According to a recent report by the Institute for the Study of War, Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war has shifted the battlefield momentum in favor of President Bashar al-Assad. It reads, "In Aleppo province, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and associated proxy forces launched a multipronged offensive on Oct. 15 that has seized large swaths of rebel-held terrain in the southern countryside of Aleppo City." According to the same report, pro-regime forces achieved tactical gains against the opposition in northeastern Latakia province. The FSA is currently present in northern Syria around Aleppo and Hama as well as in...

Newly declassified documents reveal the extent of Americaâ€™s nuclear target list during the Cold War, showing the U.S. military was prepared to hit thousands of sites in the communist world stretching from Beijing to Moscow to East Berlin. The 800 pages of documents from a 1956 plan known as the â€śAtomic Weapons Requirements Studyâ€ť were released by the National Archives and published this week for the first time by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. â€śAs far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history,â€ť the organization said,...

Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan ban Christmas In yet another sign of increasing Islamist intolerance around the world, the celebration of Christmas has come under attack in at least three countries this year: Following in the footsteps of the English Puritans who banned Christmas in the Middle Ages, Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan are now clamping down on the Christian festival. Now, the announcement from Somalia, which is struggling to get back on its feet after decades of civil war, is possibly the least surprising. The country is officially under sharia'h law; it has almost no native Christians; and Islamist militants still...

What is it about worn-out socialist "worker paradises" like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians? After Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced his run for president, Britainâ€™s Guardian newspaper pawed through old archives in his home town of Burlington, Vermont where he served as mayor in the 1980s. They discovered that Sanders really did practice the socialist solidarity he preached about rhetorically. During Bernie's mayoral tenure, Burlington formed an alliance with the Soviet city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow. When in 1988 he married his wife, Jane, the mayor decided...

File picture of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. (Agence France-Presse) LAHORE: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted in an interview that Islamabad supported and trained groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir. The former army chief has also said that Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi enjoyed the status of heroes at that time. Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dunya News on Sunday, Mr Musharraf said, "In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir...At that time, Lashkar-e- Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported...

LONDON: Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly sending 150,000 soldiers to Syria to wipe out the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to The Daily Star, he is apparently mounting an enormous military mission to take control of the terror group's stronghold of Raqqa. Raqqa is the self-declared capital of ISIS which is patrolled by as many as 5,000 jihadi members. Putin is set to mobilise 150,000 reservists whom he conscripted into the military earlier this week.

New York, September 16, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores a decree signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today which, according to a copy viewed by CPJ, bans at least 41 international journalists and bloggers from Ukraine for one year. The journalists and bloggers were among 388 people named as representing an "actual or potential threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," according to news reports. "We are dismayed by President Poroshenko's actions, including a ban on dozens of international media covering Ukraine," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "While the...

Anglo-American historian and poet who chronicled Stalin’s excesses dies in Palo Alto, Calif.Robert Conquest, an Anglo-American historian whose works on the terror and privation under Joseph Stalin made him the pre-eminent Western chronicler of the horrors of Soviet rule, died Monday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 98 years old. Mr. Conquest’s master work, “The Great Terror,” was the first detailed account of the Stalinist purges from 1937 to 1939. He estimated that under Stalin, 20 million people perished from famines, Soviet labor camps and executions—a toll that eclipsed that of the Holocaust. Writing at the height of the...

If adopted, ideas being considered by a Seattle housing committee would be devastating to the city’s appeal, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said. Get rid of single-family zoning in Seattle. That’s the big message in a draft report being worked on by Mayor Ed Murray’s housing committee, obtained by The Seattle Times. According to a draft letter, the city needs to move away from the idea that all families can live in their own home on a piece of land, the Times reports. “Today, as Seattle expands rapidly and experiences massive economic and population growth, we are held back by policies...

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is systematically targeting civilians and hospitals, often with chemical weapons, to reverse recent setbacks in the country’s civil war, witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Assad’s forces have suffered a number of battlefield defeats in recent months, with the Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra gaining ground north of the capital Damascus and more moderate rebel groups achieving victories in the south. The Syrian army has also lost about half of its soldiers throughout the course of the four-year civil war and has increasingly relied on outside militant...

Events are being held in many countries to mark 70 years since the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, but in fact the last large-scale engagement of the conflict began three days after the Nazi capitulation. More than a thousand people, mostly German soldiers, were killed in a largely forgotten battle against U.S. and Soviet troops plus Czech irregulars on May 11-12, 1945. (RFE/RL)

After a September 1989 tour of Houston's Johnson Space Center, Boris Yeltsin -freshly elected to the new Soviet Politburo- made an impromptu visit to a typical American grocery store -'Randalls'- in Clear Lake, Texas, to have himself a look around... And more than anything he'd seen at the advanced NASA facility, what really blew Yeltsin away was the sheer variety of goods at the supermarket. The fact that such stores where to be found in just about any town in America was said to be beyond comprehension for the Soviet politician- the pictures tell a thousand words- A mesmerized Yeltsin wandered the isles, marveled...

We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL, but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there. Some reports suggest these fighters are opposed to the Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria and Russia itself. But if this is the case, then why is Russia opposed to U.S. bombing of these terrorists? NBC...

The president whose major policy achievement is mandatory health insurance thinks maybe voting should be mandatory, too. Asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it's time to make voting a requirement. "Other countries have mandatory voting," Obama said Wednesday in Cleveland, where he spoke about the importance of middle class economics, and was asked about the issue during a town hall. "It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything," he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly. The clout...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. “On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged...

When the Cold War escalated in the 1950s, the United States and its European allies knew that the Warsaw Pact far outnumbered the allianceÂ’s own tanks, artillery and infantry. Should the Soviets launch an invasion of Western Europe, the NATO armies expectedâ€ŠÂ—â€Šand plannedÂ—to use tactical nuclear weapons to make up for their inferior numbers.

This guy isn't western. He's not modernized. He's not moderate. He doesn't care about the West. He's not compassionate. He is using GLASNOST And people in the West.. faced with such a weak leader as Obama.. are eating it up. Putin is a DICTATOR! He is NOT.. I repeat NOT our friend. He isn't a friend of the West. Every Soviet leader has used this "polishing" trick going back to Ivan the Terrible. PUTIN IS KGB.

So here it is…drumroll…spying factoid #2…Spying was big business during the Cold War and was deemed important enough by the Soviets for them to construct exact replicas of small U.S. towns within their borders in order to properly train their spies. One such town was Vinnytsia in what is now Ukraine. In these towns, spies in training would buy groceries from a 7-Eleven, watch U.S. television and talk only in English. Once their training was complete, many would head to places like Finland to see if they could pass as Americans before finally being stationed in the States. From my...

On Friday, Mark Levin responded to conservative backlash over his continued support for La Raza operative Marco Rubio… There are individuals who do ask to come on this program, and some of you get angry when I have them on– ‘oh, you’re a sellout’– just for having the individual on the program! (SNIP) I’m going to have Marco Rubio on this program…I get sick and tired of people who suggest that somehow you’re a ‘sellout’ because you bring these people on the program. No, I’m not. And I won’t be intimidated.

La Raza operative Marco Rubio appeared on the Sean Hannity Show Monday to promote his new ghostwritten book, American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone. During the hour-long appearance, Hannity heaped praise on Rubio– but took his Goebbels-esque propagandizing to new heights by lining up fake callers to push for Rubio 2016… Lourdes: Hiiiiiiii! I’m kinda excited to talk to two freedom fighters at the same time!

During the Cold War CIA and U.S. Air Force pilots risked life and limb to spy on the Soviet Union. Today, we too can peer behind the former Iron Curtain, all from the comfort of our personal computers. Intriguingly, such virtual exploration has revealed abandoned military bases in the far reaches of Russia that – even today – house the rusting remnants of the feared Soviet bomber force. Littered with at least 18 gutted Tupolev Tu-22M Backfires of the 444th Heavy Bomber Regiment, Vozdvizhenka air base resembles a post-apocalyptic landscape. Entering this barren place, located near Ussuriysk in the Primorsky...

Sat rusting away in a field 555 miles east of Moscow, these relics are all that's left of a bygone era of Soviet innovation in military and civilian aircraft. Among them are some of the former Communist regime's greatest achievements in air travel, that have since been superseded many times and rendered redundant. Nine thousand of the hulking Cold War wrecks can be seen at the vast plane and helicopter graveyard at Russia's largest aviation museum in Ulyanovsk, in the Middle Volga region. Each off the exhibits had to make their last flight here, touching down at the Ulyanovsk-Central airport,...

On June 22, 1941, Nazi German launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive attack on the Soviet Union that was the largest invasion in history. More than three million German soldiers, 150 divisions and 3,000 tanks comprised three mammoth army groups that created a front more than 1,800 miles long. The Germans expected to face an inferior enemy—the Slavs whom Adolph Hitler called untermenschen. Giddy from victories in Poland and France, Hitler and many in his military high command believed it was the destiny of Germany to invade Russia. “The end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end...

Putin's Secret Message to ObamaI’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth. Ever since President Obama took office, he’s been making friendly overtures to the Russians, trying to “press the reset button” in relations between our two countries. In 2012, the president was even caught on an open mike promising he’d have more “flexibility” to cave in to Russian demands after he was re-elected. Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded warmly to Obama’s gestures by warmly cheating on our arms treaties, warmly supporting our enemies in Syria, warmly annexing Crimea, and warmly abetting the destruction of a Malaysian airliner...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Jim Gilchrist — one of the founders of the Minutemen Project — said he’s reaching out across America to recruit at least 3,500 volunteers who will go to the border to patrol and cover the “porous areas” between San Diego and Brownsville, Texas. The campaign is called “Operation Normandy,” and it’s set for May 1, 2015, Raw Story reported. “If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be,” Mr. Gilchrist said, Raw Story reported. “However, there is one difference. We are not going...

The old Soviet Union did not generally destroy the weapons that it confiscated from people. The Soviets understood value, and did not wantonly destroy valuable property for no reason. They confiscated much property and sold it for state purposes, used it in defense of the state, or redistributed it to "reliable" Party members and officials. I am looking for sources to validate how the Soviets distributed the weapons that they confiscated. I know that even old obsolete revolvers made for the Czar were refurbished in state armories. I own one. Any sources for stories about...

Photos from the home of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that accompany a Washingtonian magazine puff piece this week have caused a bit of a stir online after enterprising reporters and bloggers had a closer look. Take a look at the first one: First of all, what kind of family are they feeding there? That's enough food for a small platoon. I see three people in that picture. Three people evidently preparing to go into hibernation. But secondly, and more interestingly, check out the posters in the background.

A secret package arrived at CIA headquarters in January 1958. Inside were two rolls of film from British intelligence — pictures of the pages of a Russian-language novel titled “Doctor Zhivago.” The book, by poet Boris Pasternak, had been banned from publication in the Soviet Union. The British were suggesting that the CIA get copies of the novel behind the Iron Curtain. The idea immediately gained traction in Washington.

This article highlights four basic aspects of Russian information warfare (IW) thinking: terminology and theory; military-technical and information-psychological developments; implications of IO for Russia (and the West); and the impact of IO on military doctrine and national security policy. The article begins with an explanation of the importance of information security issues to 21st century Russia.

The coexistence of "Palestinian" Arabs and Moscow started from a lie, which will be ever-present in the propaganda of so-called Palestinian cause. As former American intelligence service’s expert James Hansen emphasized in his book, Soviets advertised “cause of Palestinian guerilla groups” using untruths about “the battles between the Israelis and Palestians”. In late 1968, publicity was apparent in the Soviet press over the cause of the Palestinian guerrilla groups. This publicity was coupled with exaggerated numbers of Israeli casualties and nonexistent battles between the Israelis and Palestinians.

In June 1981, the Soviet Union began building a huge, nuclear-powered reconnaissance ship specifically designed to sail thousands of miles to the U.S. missile test site at the remote Kwajalein Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There, the vessel would sit for months, hoovering up electronic data in order to determine what America’s most secretive weapons could do. But the spy ship Ural, completed in May 1983, sailed only once—from the Baltic shipyard where she was built to her home port of Vladivostok—and never went anywhere near Kwajalein. Hobbled by faulty hardware, cursed with bad luck and starved...

On the Soviet ChurchIvan Ilyin(unidentified excerpt, noticed here) ... Some went to martyrdom. Others fled into exile or underground - the forests and ravines. Others went underground – the underground of the personal soul: they learned silent, unobtrusive externally, secret prayer, the prayer of the intimate fire. But there were - the fourth. These decided to say to the Bolsheviks: "Yes, we are with you," and not just to say, but actually to act and to speak, and to affirm by their acts; to help them and to serve their cause, to fulfill all their requirements, to lie with them,...

Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the world's most famous gun, has died. While Kalashnikov designed a weapon that became synonymous with killing on a sometimes indiscriminate scale. He was seen in the Soviet Union as a national hero and symbol of Moscow's proud military past. A former soldier, inspired by the drawbacks of Russian weaponry in the Second World War he decided to invent a new assault rifle. This process culminated in 1947 with the design of the AK-47. Over the course of his career he evolved the basic design into a weapons family. Kalashnikov, who was in his 20s when...